If you’re serious about blogging, then setting achievable blogging goals is very important. As bloggers, we face an endless list of tasks that need doing each day. Plus often have so many ideas we want to explore and implement. Without achievable blogging goals, you might find that you don’t feel as if you’re moving forward and growing your blog.
Setting achievable blogging goals will help you stay motivated and can drive you forward if you hit a blogger’s slump!
However, a problem may arise if you decide one of your goals is the hit 200k Pinterest followers in the next 6 months, when you have 500 followers. You might struggle to achieve this, which could then leave you feeling despondent and deflated. You didn’t fail, your goal was just unrealistic.
There’s a lot more to achieving any goal than just having the goal. But it’s a vital first step. You may wonder how some people seem to be so great at achieving their goals. While others aren’t…. Often the reason some people fail is that they don’t have a specific, clear and focused goal.
In addition, they don’t have a schedule of action to help them work toward achieving the goal. They just wing it and hope for the best!
How to achieve your goals
1. Create clear, specific, and achievable blogging goals
Your goals must be clear and very specific. They also must be possible. You want to challenge yourself a bit and set the goal high as this gives you higher motivation to achieve them. However, you need to ensure that any goal you set is possible.
You might need to do a little research to set a goal. For instance, let’s say your goal is to lose 50 pounds. Anyone who needs to lose 50 pounds and sets their mind to it can do so, but they can’t and shouldn’t do it in one month. An unreasonable goal is ‘I want to lose 50 pounds in a month’. Instead, a more reasonable and doable goal is to state ‘I want to lose 50 pounds in 30 weeks.’ This is in line with health recommendations not to lose over 2 pounds per week and gives you a little cushion for plateaus and other issues.
A great twist is to set Good, Better, Best goals. This means you set a range of results for each goal. You will get a little hit of dopamine when you achieve the ‘Good’ result, which will motivate you to continue to strive for the ‘Better’ or ‘Best’ goals.
So, for example, if you want to earn £500 launching a new product, which would break even with a bit of profit. The ‘Good’ goal is £500, the ‘Better’ could be £700 and the ‘Best’ is your wildest dream result, maybe £1,000.
2. Each goal needs set actionable tasks
Any goal that you really want to meet needs to have the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ included with the ‘what’ of the goal. In the example above, you want to lose 50 pounds in 30 weeks, which will be a little less than 2 pounds per week. You must look at your diet, compute the number of calories you should consume and the amount of exercise you need to see those results.
Luckily, there are online calculators to help you work this out easily, but let’s say that you determine that if you consumed 1800 calories a day, and walked for 20 minutes each day, you would achieve your goal that you set within the time limit. Now you need to include planning your meals and fitting in the exercise necessary to reach your goal.
Thanks to your research, you know exactly what’s needed to be successful with the goal you set. You can see a clear path to success just by going further and adding these actionable tasks:
- Eat 1800 calories a day
- Walk fast for 20 minutes per day.
Seeing that in black and white you can see that it’s very doable and achievable.
3. Schedule everything
Leave nothing to chance. Instead, schedule in the work necessary to reach your goals into your calendar. Writing a list isn’t good enough–you need to schedule in everything so you don’t miss a single day because of losing track of your schedule.
Carrying on with our weight loss example, you’ll need time to eat healthier, which requires more chopping and cooking. You’ll also need time to fit in the exercise, which will take over 20 minutes because of prep time and recovery time. You need to be realistic about how long each thing will take and schedule them into your day properly.
4. Take action
Regular action leads to goal success. Each morning, look at your calendar and follow through on the plans you’ve made to get things done. All you have to do is the minimum necessary each day to reach your goal. When you get through each day having done the minimum, you’re a success–every single day. You are making your goal achievement a given.
5. Repeat
Finally, you must repeat these steps every single day. When you make very specific and clear goals with very specific steps to achieving the goal, based on reality, you’ll soon discover the secret to success that seems to escape so many people.
The real secret is in the doing.
It’s like going on a long walk–if you take one step at a time, moving in the direction that you’ve planned out for yourself, you will get to the end and you’ll be successful. Reaching your goals is just a matter of setting reasonable and realistic goals, hen setting up a schedule of actionable tasks and steps that bring about the result you want. You can start today to achieve your goals.
You can further help your goal setting if you also;
- Evaluate your current point. To grow, you need to know what your starting point is. That way you can check back and evaluate how far you have progressed.
- Establish where you want your blog to go. Is your ultimate goal (long term) to be a pro blogger? Write a book? Or write in other places? Having your ultimate goal in mind will help you figure out which short-term goals will be useful in getting you to this point.
Let’s get to work setting your achievable blogging goals
Grab a piece of paper and brain dump everything you want to achieve in life, blog and everything else.
Choose your Outcome Goals
Next, you will highlight the projects you want to achieve in the next 12 months. These should be your large goals. They won’t be your ultimate super long-term ones, just focus on the next 12 months. I don’t want to be too prescriptive on how many you choose, but aim for roughly 7-10.
Did you know you’re 42% (Matthews) more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down regularly. I know, 42%!
Life often takes over and so our outcome goals need to be kept somewhere prominent. This will mean we will see them every day and they’ll become lodged in our consciousness.
If we believe something will happen or that we will achieve something, it’s MUCH more likely to happen, because we MAKE it so. Also, because we focus our efforts on those goals primarily, we are less likely to get side-tracked.
Here’s the plot twist!
We will not focus on our entire year. Instead, we will divide all of your annual goals into 90-day cycles. Breaking your year down into 90-day cycles makes so much more sense for a few reasons.
Psychologically, it’s hard for us to work for some- thing which our brain considers too far into the future. Todd Herman found that 90 days ahead is the magical horizon, past which our mind switches off a little. Goals within a 90-day window are seen as goals that can impact our ‘today’ and therefore are readily achieved.
You should defiantly have a long-term vision, but this isn’t something tangible that you are working on directly right now. You should focus your efforts on developing skills that will have the most impact on your business.
90-day goals are far less overwhelming than standard annual goals. They also allow you to be more agile and can change your course. Your motivation will be higher and so you are more focused and productive. You can set goals for later in the year depending on your year so far.
Analyse each outcome goal. When will you make this happen? Also, add in your financial expectations for each. Don’t be shy, it’s important to commit to a figure, as this will mean you are more likely to achieve it. Without committing to a number, we’re just going with the flow and leaving it up to chance and fate, which is no way to run a business.
The next step is to assign your key outcome goals to points on your yearly calendar. For example, I want to run four free challenges during the year, it would make sense for me to put one free challenge in each 90-day cycle. Allocate all of your goals in this way and write them on your calendar where it makes sense for them to be.
Only focusing on your first 90-day cycle. Work backwards from each outcome goal and add in your smaller milestone goals (performance goals) at appropriate times, which will lead you to success and achievement of your main outcome goals.
Need an example? If one of my outcome goals was to sell 50 spots on a course. The performance goals could be;
• Finish creating the course
• Grow my email list so I can reach more people.
• Advertise the course on FB.
• Use social media to create interest.
• Open sign-ups.
I would then take each one of these goals and break them into the smallest actions they can be. Resulting in our process goals. These are the things you put on your to-do list.
How else can you stack the odds in your favour with goal achievement? One great trick is to reward yourself for your achievements. Treat yourself to something you want when you achieve one of your goals. These rewards will help you stay focused and motivated. You could even tie the reward to the goal. So, for example, if your goal was photography based, then the reward could be something new for your camera.
Finding a small group of like-minded people, within which you can share your goals, can help immeasurably. You can all hold each other accountable and help each other make progress on your goals.
To give yourself maximum chance of success, you need to review your goals frequently. Know your goals well and revisit them regularly. Even if it’s just a little check in to see how you’re getting on. This will re-motivate and refocus you, also giving you a reminder of the work still to do.
Sometimes achieving our goals takes a mindset shift too. Who will you need to become, to achieve your goals? If your goals are a little hairy-scary and they will take lots of networking, for example, you must be a confident person who can engage others. Are you? If not, you need to become that person if you’re to succeed.
This might seem more complicated than traditional goal setting. However, ask yourself, how many times has traditional long-term goal setting failed you? I’m guessing a few times. Setting goals this way might take a little longer but you will have a huge amount of focus, you will always work on things that will have a positive impact on your outcome goals and you will eventually have more precious family time.
Decide on your 7-12 outcome goals for the next year. Divide these into quarters, depending on what fits best where in your year. Then break these goals down into sub-goals and then the smallest tasks that go on your to-do list. Oh, and actually put them on your to-do list!
How to make sure you achieve your goals
- Don’t focus on too many goals at once – If you try to achieve everything all at once, you will soon become overwhelmed and probably not achieve very much.
- Believe you can achieve – You have heard the saying, ‘If you don’t believe in yourself, no-one else will’, well the same goes for goals. Believe you can do it to achieve. There is a great power in positive thinking.
- Commit them to paper – Writing down your goals makes them much more concrete, and the more concrete they are, the more chance you have of achieving them.
- Reward your achievements – Treat yourself when you achieve one of your goals. Rewards will help you stay focused and motivated. You could always tie the reward to the goal. If your goals were photography orientated, then the reward could be something new for your camera, for example.
- Find a tribe to make you accountable – Finding a small group of like-minded people, within which you can share your goals, can help. You can all hold each other accountable and help each other achieve your goals. Think about sharing expertise to help each other.
- Review frequently – Know your goals well and revisit them regularly, even if it is just a little check in to see how you are getting on. This will re-motivate and refocus you, also giving you an idea of the work still to do.
To help you with your short-term goals, I have created a goal setting planner that you can get your hands on here.
Have you set yourself achievable blogging goals? If not, will you now? What goal can you set for yourself today? What tips do you have to make sure you achieve your goals?
